Friday, 16 August 2013

The Coalition government, and
Fianna Fail before them, have been using the excuse of the Banking Collapse and
the subsequent bail-out to impose what have been probably the harshest cuts and
the most severe Austerity regime ever in the history of the State.

In fact, closer analysis of the
situation shows that this is nothing more than a smokescreen to try and hide
the fact that the so-called Austerity regime is merely an attempt to
consolidate more and more wealth in the pockets of the rich at our expense.

While we struggle under the burden
of unemployment, cuts, emigration, increased taxes and the tragedy of hugely
increased suicide rates, our two main banks – AIB and Bank of Ireland – guilty
parties in our banking collapse, continue to pay huge salaries to their top
executives.

RICHIE BOUCHER was Chief
Executive of Bank of Ireland’s retail division during the pre-crash property
frenzy. Best buddies
with property developers such as Sean Dunne, development loans in the bank
reached a high of €7.1 billion under his watch, many of these ultimately based
on overstated land values and insufficient security.

ARCHIE KANE, appointed
part-time governor of Bank of Ireland in 2012, had previously been the Director
of Lloyds insurance division in the UK when it mis-sold payment protection
insurance on a stunning scale. By April of this year Lloyds had to set aside
£7.9bn to cover claims from the victims of this scandal. Kane, along with four
other directors, had parts of his 2010
bonus clawed back as a result.

Archie then bailed out of the UK
and came to Ireland, haven for failed financiers and bailed-out banks. In his
present part-time job as governor of the Bank of Ireland, Kane gets an annual
salary of €349,000, or €7,000 per week. He also has a consultancy arrangement
worth €59,000.

MORE FACTS – BANK OF IRELAND

24 of the Bank of Ireland’s top executives are
on a salary of over €400,000 each,
or a minimum of €7692 per week;

An additional 19 of their top executives get
over €300,000, which works out €5769 minimum per week;

150 get over €150,000 or at least €2884 per
week.

FROM A TOTAL BAILOUT BY US OF NEARLY €70bn, AIB/EBS GOT €20.7bn, BANK OF
IRELAND GOT €4.7bn - IS THIS HOW THEY ARE SPENDING OUR MONEY?

EVEN MORE FACTS – AIB, NOW WHOLLY
OWNED BY US

4 top executives in the AIB get an annual
salary of more than €400,000 which works out at a minimum of €7692 per
week;

8 receive more than €300,000, or €5769 per
week;

44 get more than €200,000 or €3846 per week;

134 get more than €150,000, or at least €2884
per week.

STAYING WITH THE FACTS, AND AN
INTERESTING TIMELINE

In 1999, AIB’s part in the DIRT scandal was
revealed, and it was forced to make a €90 million settlement with the
Revenue Commissioners;

By January 2009 AIB had to be rescued in a
bailout that eventually amounted to €6.5 billion of our money.

TRUSTEE SAVINGS BANK

Senior executives of the Trustee Savings
Bank recently decided to cease contributions to defined pensions benefit
scheme, which means that ordinary bank workers who expected a pension of
€30,000 will now only receive €5,000 per year, while the pensions of top
executives will remain untouched.

NAMA

The ‘bad bank’ (our bad
bank) set up to deal with loans which were not being paid back to the banks
pays an average salary of €102,579. This includes salaries and/or commission to
between 110 and 120 developers whose loans have been taken over by NAMA. Two of
these developers are being paid as much as €200,000 per year, or €3,846 per
week.

POLITICIANS’ SALARIES AND PENSIONS

ENDA KENNY gets an
annual salary of €200,000, or €4,000 per week.

If he were to resign today he would
get an annual pension of €21,466 for the two years he has spent as Taoiseach,
as well as more than €15,000 per year for his time spent as Minister of Trade
and Tourism in the Rainbow coalition of 1994 – 1997. This would bring his
pension up to nearly €37,000, or over €700 per week, on top of his TD’s salary!

EAMON GILMORE gets an
annual salary of €184,405, or €3546 per week.

If he were to resign today he would
get €18,347 per year for his two years as Tánaiste, as well as nearly €7,500
for his time as junior minister in the Rainbow Coalition of the ‘90’s, bringing
his annual pension up to nearly €25,847, or nearly €500 per week, again, on top of his TD’s salary!

MICHAEL NOONAN gets an
annual salary of €170,000 per year, or over €3269 per week, as well as a
pension of €80,685 or €1552 per week for his previous stints as TD and
minister.

BERTIE AHERN gets a
whopping annual pension of €152,332, or over €2929 per week.

All of the above are just some of the people who got us into this financial
mess, and the architects of the so-called Austerity Regime under which you and
I, the ordinary citizens of Ireland, are suffering.

AUSTERITY FOR WHOM??

HERE IS A LIST OF SOME OF THE
RECENT CUTS (deep breath here now...):

They came for the young…

EDUCATION
CUTS

The embargo on recruitment to the public
service has meant larger class numbers;

Cuts in Resource Teaching hours;

A cap on the numbers of Special needs
Assistants, even though there is a 10% increase in the number of children
in need of this service;

4.8% increase in the cost of educating a child
(on top of increase of 9.4% last year) (CSO figures);

Reduction in 3rd Level grants.

They came for the infirm (take a
deep breath for this one)…

HEALTH CUTS

The embargo on recruitment to the public
service has reduced staff numbers in the HSE by 4%, or 4,000
workers;

Health Budget cut by €721m in 2013, or by more
than 5%,thus bringing the health service to situation of crisis, more akin
to the health service of a 3rd world economy, where the already
hard-pressed tax payer feels compelled to fund-raise in order to maintain
health services. This is in the wake of cuts of €1.75 billion in the
previous two years;

A cut of €383m to Primary Care Schemes in the
last budget;

Slashing of individual Hospital budgets by up
to nearly 10%;

Ward and bed closures;

Long waits on trolleys in A & E;

Unacceptably long waiting lists, with patients
waiting sometimes as long as 4 years to be seen by a consultant;

Cuts to Medical Card eligibility;

Cancer patients now only eligible for medical
cards if they are at a terminal stage of their illness;

Prescription charges trebled, from 50c per
item, to €1.50;

Disability Services cut by 1.2%;

Recent announcement by James Reilly of a
further cut of €130m, with another €129m before the end of the year, and
more cuts to come in 2014;

Reduction in Home Help hours; Reduction in Home
Care Packages;

Removal of Gluten-free products and others from
Medical Card and other State Reimbursement Schemes;

Closure of Elderly Care public beds in
Community Nursing Units, with some Community Nursing Units closed
completely;

Cuts in Day Services, Residential and Respite
Services for the elderly and disabled.

They
came for the must vulnerable in our society…

WELFARE
CUTS

Cuts to Carers’ Allowance, and more stringent
qualification criteria;

Reduction in Carers’ Respite Care Grant, by
€325;

Cuts in Respite Care places;

Cuts in Home Care Services;

Cuts in Domiciliary Care Allowance;

Future Cuts to Rent Allowance for
pensioners;

Cuts to Rural Transport Scheme;

Tax introduced on Maternity Benefit;

Cuts to Phone Allowance and Electricity/Gas
Allowance for pensioners and other recipients;

Child Benefit cut by between €10 and €20, depending
on family size;

Cuts to Mobility Allowance; Cuts to Mobility
Grant;

A cut of €50 per child on Back to School
Clothing and Footwear Allowance;

Cost of Education Allowance abolished;

The duration of Jobseeker’s Benefit reduced by
3 months;

Reductions in Exceptional Needs Payments;

Increases in PRSI for the self-employed,
abolition of employees’ PRSI-free allowance;

One-Parent Family Allowance only payable until
youngest child reaches the age of 10yrs (to be reduced further to 7 yrs in
2014);

Reduction in Income Disregard for One Parent
Family Payment by €20 per week (to be reduced by another €20 per week in
2014, and €15 in the following 2 years, bringing it to a whopping €70 per
week in total by 2016).

They came for middle Ireland…

INCREASED TAXES

Property Tax; Carbon Tax;

Septic Tank Charges;

Water Charges ( to be imposed in 2014);

Broadcast Tax – to replace the TV licence (to
be imposed in 2015);

Increased Motor Tax and VRT;

Maternity Benefit to be treated as taxable
income;

Increased rates of DIRT, CAT, reduction in
threshold for CAT.

RESULT
OF THEIR POLICIES:

UNEMPLOYMENT

Unemployment has risen to 435,200;

Official Unemployment Rates over the past 2
years have fluctuated between 13.6% and 15.1%, with emigration being
arguably the single biggest factor in any reductions in the rate of
unemployment;

Official jobless figures only include those on
the Live Register, and disregard other welfare recipients, or those on
various back-to work schemes, such as Tús, Job Bridge, etc.;

Unofficial Rates of Unemployment are given as
20%; The IMF warned in April that Ireland “faces an acute unemployment
crisis”, saying the broad jobless rate is at “a staggering 23%”, despite
emigration.

EMIGRATION

Between April 2011 and April 2012, 87,100
people emigrated from this country. This works out at more than 7,000 per
month, or over 200 per day, more than half of whom were Irish citizens.
This is the highest emigration figure since the Great Famine;

A 2013 survey commissioned by the National
Youth Council has shown that over 300,000 people have emigrated in the
last 4 years, and that over a quarter of Irish households have seen a
close family member emigrate in the past two years;

The Department of Social Protection website
advertises nearly 1,000 jobs outside of Ireland, including excavation work
in Iraq - an unemployed man in his 60’s was encouraged to take up work as
a bus driver - in Malta.

SUICIDE

The official suicide rate increased
by an alarming 20% in 2012 (provisional HSE figures), though the HSE’s own
suicide prevention officer stated that true figure is probably 20% higher
again.

Those results can be measured, but
how do you measure the misery, the stress on individuals, on families, on
communities? What measure is there for the loss of national dignity as our
financial freedom and independence is usurped by Europe, generations condemned
to debt slavery?

Their own
salaries/perks/allowances reduced to a scale commensurate with the size of the
country;

A reduction
in the number of Ministers and Junior Ministers;

A reduction
in their own numbers in the Dáil.

SUMMARY

It is time we told them enough is
enough, that we refuse any longer to be the fall guys for their mistakes, that
we will no longer be hoodwinked by their ‘Austerity Programme’ while they and
their ilk continue to line their pockets and live obscene lifestyles on grossly
inflated salaries.

Confront your Local Representative at every
possible opportunity, make life difficult for them, make your voice
heard;

Keep yourself informed about what’s going on –
through social media, other media.

Talk to your friends and neighbours – tell them
what’s going on;

Get involved in the discussions on the social
media. Encourage others to do so too;

Get involved in your local Anti-Austerity
campaign or any other group standing up for the rights and welfare of
ordinary people;

Come to the demo in Dublin on Sept 18th, the
opening date for Dail Eireann, bring your friends and neighbours. Let’s
make this a day to remember.